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1 million fake Whats App Messenger downloads from Google’s Play Store

Industry experts have started to ask questions about the Google Play Store after a fake version on Whats App Messenger was downloaded one million times.

The malicious app was designed to appear as if it were produced by WhatsApp Inc by using the precise name but replacing the space with a special character resembling a space, undetectable by the average users. The app concealed its presence by creating a blank icon that could not be seen in the apps screen after being installed. A similar technique could be used to distribute malware to mobile devices on to which the app is downloaded.

This is not the first time that the Play Store has hosted malicious apps.one such app around two years ago was disguised as a battery monitor, but actually sent exorbitant premium-rate texts from users’ handsets.

Whats App is owned by Facebook who bought it in 2014, recently the service suffered a world-wide outage.